The traditional story
The usual account of Cambridge’s beginning starts in Oxford. According to tradition, in 1209 a scholar at Oxford was involved in the death of a woman, and townspeople responded by seizing and hanging two or three students, whether or not they were the guilty ones. Facing danger, many masters and students left Oxford, and some of them settled in Cambridge, about 80 miles to the east. Others reportedly went to places such as Reading and Northampton.
Parts of this are better documented than others. Oxford’s scholars did suspend lectures and disperse around that time, and that is generally accepted. Whether a substantial group moved to Cambridge, and whether this was the main origin of the university there, is less certain. Most historians treat the migration as a plausible trigger rather than a clearly proven foundation event. Teachers and students may well have been gathering at Cambridge already, since the town was a river port with a market and several religious houses.
What Cambridge was like
Like many other medieval towns, Cambridge in the early thirteenth century was a modest place on the River Cam, at the edge of the fens. It lay on trade routes through East Anglia, and goods moved on the river. The town had religious communities, including houses of canons and later friars of the Franciscan order and others, whose schools could provide teaching, much as monasteries and schools did elsewhere. A young community of scholars could find lodging, food and books there, and the town’s size was probably less intimidating than Oxford’s.
There was no single moment of founding. Instead, a group of masters taught in rented rooms and religious houses, and slowly began acting like a corporation. By the mid-thirteenth century, records mention officers, including a chancellor, who represented the masters and handled disputes. The chancellor in a university like this was often responsible for discipline and for licensing masters, and was linked to the bishop of Ely, in whose diocese Cambridge lay.
Hostels and the idea of a college
Early students typically lived in rented lodgings, called hostels or halls, run by a master or a landlord. Rooms were shared, discipline was loose and costs varied. Students from poor backgrounds struggled to stay, and some depended on charity.
The college developed as a response. A college was an endowed house in which a group of scholars lived under rules and was supported by a founder’s gift of property. At first it was a small charitable institution for graduate students, often those studying theology or law, rather than a place for undergraduates. Oxford’s colleges came somewhat earlier, and Cambridge followed.
Peterhouse and the earliest colleges
The first Cambridge college is Peterhouse, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, bishop of Ely. According to the traditional account, Balsham first placed scholars in a hospital in the town and, after friction with the hospital’s residents, bought houses next to the church of St Peter, where the college took shape. He provided funds, and later benefactors added to it. The statutes that regulated the community were modeled on those of Merton College in Oxford, which shows how closely the two universities were connected.
In the fourteenth century, more colleges followed, supported by bishops, nobles and wealthy patrons. Examples that are well known include:
- Clare, whose origin is linked to University Hall and later refounded in the 1330s by Elizabeth de Clare.
- Pembroke, founded in 1347 by Marie de St Pol, countess of Pembroke.
- Gonville Hall, founded in 1348 and refounded in the following century as Gonville and Caius.
- Trinity Hall, founded in 1350 by William Bateman, bishop of Norwich, with a focus on law. The mid-fourteenth century was also the time of the Black Death, which killed many clergy, and some historians link the founding of colleges in these years to the need to replace them.
- Corpus Christi, founded in 1352, notable because it was sponsored by town religious guilds rather than a single great patron, in a period when craft guilds and similar associations were common in English towns.
Founders often had practical aims. A bishop might want educated clergy for his diocese, and a noble patron might seek prayers for his or her soul, a typical medieval motive. Many colleges required fellows to pray for the founder.
Papal recognition
Recognition from outside helped Cambridge secure its position. The papacy confirmed Cambridge as a studium generale in 1318, a status in which its degrees were more widely accepted. Royal charters also supported the university and its privileges. This kind of backing was typical of medieval universities, which depended on outside protection to defend their members’ rights against local interests.
What was studied
The curriculum followed the general pattern of the time: arts first, with grammar, logic and philosophy, then higher study in theology or law. The early strengths of Cambridge are often described as being in the arts and in divinity, though Oxford was usually regarded as the stronger of the two for much of the Middle Ages. Medicine and law also had a presence. The standard texts were Latin works, and teaching was by lectures and disputations, as in other medieval universities.
Scholars were generally regarded as clerics, which gave them certain legal advantages and also made them dependent on church patronage for a career.
A smaller sister
Compared with Oxford, Cambridge was smaller and less influential for much of the medieval period. It produced notable scholars, but it did not yet have the same concentration of famous teachers. The balance shifted gradually, helped by the building of colleges and, in the fifteenth century, by royal interest. The later royal patronage and the tensions with the town came after this early period. In short, the early story is about a small provincial school that grew steadily, rather than a sudden creation.
What to treat with care
Several popular claims about Cambridge should be handled cautiously. Dates in older histories for early foundations are sometimes later reconstructions. The 1209 story comes mostly from chronicles written some time afterward, and different sources vary on names and numbers. The simplest accurate summary is that Cambridge emerged in the early thirteenth century, probably encouraged by disruption at Oxford, and gained its first endowed college in 1284.